Now Comes the Night
by Meep meep
Summary: Every day I feel myself drifting, and I see that everyone else can see it too, but it’s like fighting the tides, trying to reign me in. God knows they did try, and it isn’t their fault that all their efforts can't save the sinking ship Ianto POV end of S1


Disclaimer – Torchwood does not belong to me, clearly.

I think about it a lot. Often at night, in the dark after everyone has gone home and I'm left holding his coat like somehow he'll appear in it. Like I'm just waiting for his arms to fold into the sleeves, like the coat isn't as cold as it's been for months. Like he might actually come back. If not for me then for his damnable, stupid coat.

And then I think about it all over again when I get over the sudden lump in my throat and the stark, stabbing numbness in my chest and actually leave this place so full of (painful) memories and go home to my (empty) flat. And I know that the stabbing and the numbness shouldn't happen all at once but then I think, maybe it's just the grieving process sped up. Because while I know he's not dead (he won't ever be dead) I also have enough sense to know that I've lost him. Lost him to some phantom physician from his past. The past I don't know about, because getting him to open up is (like pounding my head against a wall)…hard.

And even knowing I've lost and wallowing in the darkness this knowledge brings doesn't quite make the pain go away (barely makes a dent). I thought it would help if I looked into him, the space doctor, and I spent days in the archives, searching and researching every file we own (there's quite a few). But it didn't help (just wasted hours in the dusty shelves, screaming pain at the ceilings).

It's stupid because I've lost, truly lost, before (and this is _so much_ worse). And I know that he isn't truly lost, that eventually he'll come back (I hope) but I don't know how I'll feel when he finally makes his come back (if I'm still around to come back to). I try to keep him alive in my mind, knowing that he's still alive in the world, just by holding his coat, watching the DVDs he left me, sifting through the photographs (because I'll lose everything I have left if I lose the pain) but the numbness doesn't leave even when the pain sets in, it just makes the world feel distant. It feels like the strings are interconnected but my thread was pulled out. We're parallel, the world and I.

And every day I feel myself drifting, and I see that everyone else can see it too, but it's like fighting the tides, trying to reign me in. God knows they did try, and it isn't their fault that all their efforts can't save the sinking ship (spiralling down, down). I can't even blame _him_ (though God knows I've tried and I hate him for every second, every breath of the wasted efforts). It's my own fault for becoming attached, for needing him around so much (because it's not like her, I was drowning but then I could breathe and now I've been thrown back to the seas only this time they're deeper, and full of rocks. And sharks).

I can't stand feeling like the lost child (so I've stopped feeling, anything but the aching, yawning emptiness clawing at my insides) and I've tried to look at the world differently (but it's so hard and all I see is through his eyes and that hurts more than it heals) but it doesn't work. And I hate feeling so angry, at him and at the world and at the doctor (and at her, for pretending a loss she doesn't feel, for stepping into shoes she doesn't fill, for treating me like what we lost was the same when it was worlds apart). I hate feeling this anger, because it's so much more than I felt the last time and that makes me feel so guilty for not loving her so much that I felt like this, and guilty that I feel so relieved that I didn't.

And it doesn't feel like this fog will ever lift from my mind, (doomed to wander, and I'm lost, so lost) and it feels like every day's a trial that shouldn't be as hard as it is to me. Just getting out of the bed (the bed that is now too big, too wide, too cold, too empty) in the morning is like climbing a mountain. Just knowing that I'll have to smile and pretend (faking life all over again, just like last time but so _not_) feels like climbing into a life that isn't mine (any more). And she keeps telling me to talk to her, but just opening my mouth to speak about it feels like blasphemy and my throat closes before a word passes my lips and every time she looks like I've let her down (and maybe I have) until she just stopped asking (no one left to care because there's nothing left of me to care about).

And yes, I'll admit, that part of me just hates to have lost (or so I tell myself) and that's part of the reason that I can't move past this (the other part being that I just can't move). But the clawing and the screaming and the aching inside my head, like literal holes in my being (that won't ever be full again) just doesn't let up and I find myself lying in bed, holding my chest together and struggling to breath.

And it seems like fate (irony) that one of his possessions that I still have is the one thing that I'm told that someone in my condition shouldn't lay hands on. Because I know what my condition is, just depression (or survivors guilt) such an innocuous word. Doesn't sound like someone should confiscate his service pistol from the box of things he left behind (because she said that boxing it up would help and it doesn't and I hate her a little more for that lie). After all, it's not like I take it out every night, when I finally catch enough breath to drag myself to the table it lies on (only most of them). It's not like I've ever considered the possibility that using it would help me any (nothing will ever help me any, that's just the easy option and god, what I wouldn't give to be the type of man who goes for the easy option because yes, sometimes the easy option looks pretty damn good).

But what I hate more than anything is that I'm not me anymore (that he has the power to define me and when he leaves all definition is lost, and I become fuzzy at the edges, and I fall apart at the seams). I hate that I can't control myself, that I can't throw his things out (of a window, like I would've if he'd shown up here anytime in the last three months) and I can't make myself leave the memories alone, lock the office door. I can't make myself get over him. And it's killing me. I cannot survive in this void, and every night that I take out that pistol I get one step closer to a ledge that I've stood on before, only now there's no one to pull me back. This time, I'll fall.

I hate that I'm falling, and I hate that I fell in the first place, that I was stupid enough to fall in love (and I think that if I'd told you, you might have stayed. But then I remember that it's you and that nothing would've held you here, least of all here). And I hate that every step I take towards the edge I think that if I had been her, you never would've walked away (ran, really).

Because I know that while I'll never be enough for you, I also know that she already almost was.


End file.
